Mnemosyne's Lounge
"Mnemosyne's Lounge" was James' debut album, released in 1999. It was issued under the name Easter Bradford, which he was using professionally. It is a concept album in which each song is dedicated to one of the Muses or Furies of Greek Mythology, Mnemosyne being their mother and sister respectively. Mnemosyne is the goddess of memory, and the album was meant to be a gathering of all these characters to tell James' life story up until that point. The entire album can be streamed for free or bought at https://jamesbradford.bandcamp.com/album/mnemosynes-lounge Record Label James responded to an advertisement in The Washington Blade, a D.C. based queer newspaper, for a local gay owned and operated recording studio. His boyfriend at that time paid for James to record a 4-song demo E.P. at an affordable rate offered by the studio's owner, recording artist and producer Richard Morel. After these four songs were completed, Morel offered to sign James to his newly formed indie record label Pink Noise. James was the second artist signed to the label after another artist, Kala Azim. Over the coming months James collaborated with Morel on a number of songs, starting with the single "Relationship Destruction Machine." Morel's background was primarily in dance and house remixes and experimental rock. James' background was in musical theater and folk/pop music. James would primarily come in with lyrics, melodies and harmonies and a song idea. After recording vocals and sometimes contributing percussion or keyboard to the tracks, Morel would flesh out and complete the overall direction and sound of the songs. Ultimately 8 songs were completed, but at a certain point Morel felt James was relying too heavily on his input to create the music. He told him to take a month off from recording to put together a band and try to bring in some songs that were more heavily of his own creation. During this time "Relationship Destruction Machine" was put on a compilation album called "DCide: the 40". James teamed up with a D.C. band called Practically Einstein and began work on two new songs: "Carnival" and a cover of the Cyndi Lauper song "Primitive". He brought rough recordings of these songs in to Morel, who did not approve. James became frustrated that his project with Pink Noise had become stagnant and was not moving forward, and angrily asked Morel to release him from his contract. Morel complied, and James self-released the album to little fanfare. During this time frame, James performed many of his new songs to backing track at a variety of gay pride events. Notably he performed to a crowd of hundreds of thousands, on the main stage of Millenium Pride in 2000, as the opener for singer Jimmy Somerville. One official single from the album was released, for "Relationship Destruction Machine". It contained remixes/reworkings of the title track in addition to a different mix of the song "Kissable". Aftermath Though the album and single failed to make any real impact, many years later music from both was used in several film and TV projects. Most notably, five songs were used in the soundtrack to the HereTV television series "Dante's Cove" and "The Lair". The songs were actually used before getting James' signature on a contract, or paying him, and he didn't find out about their use until six months after the episodes were in rotation. James accepted a payment and signed a contract after the fact with the television production company. That contract included signing over partial publishing to them, ostensibly so that they could produce sampler promo CDs to give out when promoting the series without having to pay James royalties. This never occurred, but to date the production company's music publishing imprint "Songs of PS Here" retain 100% publishing on the utilized songs. The production company, Regent Entertainment, would go on to be sued by numerous banks, publishers, graphic designers and other artists for sums in the millions. Track Listing # Relationship Destruction Machine # Kissable # Bayou Refueling Station # Scarecrow Song # Sugar # Circle's Side (of the Story) # I'm Gonna be Strong # Red Hotel Wall (Live in Studio) # Relationship Destruction Machine (Karaoke Version) # Kissable (Karaoke Version) # Bayou Refueling Station (Karaoke Version) # Scarecrow Song (Karaoke Version) # Sugar (Karaoke Version) # Circle's Side (of the Story) (Karaoke Version)